Schenn-Sational Night for 'Killer' and the Leafs

On a night that Doug Gilmore will remember for a long time, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that there was a game being played. Watching the ceremonial raising of Gilmores banner, brought to life a lot of great Leaf memories.

The inspiration wasn't lost on the team either as they went on to defeat the very one (or should I say two) dimensional Pittsburgh Penguins by a final score of 5-4.



The combination of Crosby and Malkin is lethal to say the least, but, beyond the two of them, the Penguins just don't have that much to offer. Having said that, it would be kind of cool to see the two of them end up #1 and #2 in scoring and the end of the season. A feat that hasn't been seen ironically enough since 1996 when Mario Lemiuex and Jaromir Jagr did it for these very same Penguins.

It was an excellent game to watch. Fast paced, lots of skill. It still amazes me sometimes to watch some of these guys and the things that they can do with the puck.

Luke Schenn was again a pleasure to watch. He has the poise and confidence of a player 10 years his senior most of the time, and will be a very big part of the leafs roster in the future. In the absense of Kaberle, Schenn logged over 23 minutes of ice time tonight was always on the ice with the dynamic duo.

Vesa Toskala however may not. There were three goal scored on him tonight, that probably shouldn't have been. Two of them were simply because of poor positional play. One however, was as a result of a blown call in my opinion. Toskala was literally pushed halfway across his goal crease by the Pittsburgh player which the afforded 'Sid the Kid' a virtually empty net.

Now, I don't typically harp on the officiating too much. However, it seems to me that there should at least be a happy medium somewhere.

Nik Antropov, after going 17 games without scoring a goal had his second in as many games, and Jason Blake added another goal and an assist to his points total tonight. In the last twenty games he has easily been the Leafs best player and has been on a point a game pace.

The Leafs next action comes Tuesday at home against the Panthers and as always, you can hear all the action live, right here on Bench Brawl!

Leafs remind Raycroft why they let him go!

It would have made for a nice headline, " Raycroft stops fifty shots and Tucker has first six point night of his career in Romp of the Maple Leafs, but alas, it just wasn't to be.

No, on this night it would be " Antropov scores to en 17 game goal less skid " , or ,
" Blake scores again ", or maybe even " Dominic Moore scores career high in goals ".

Yep, you could have taken lot away from this game that saw Toronto lay a rare whoopin' on a team that, granted is missing arguabley their two best offensive players, in Joe Sakic and Paul Stasney, would normily have little trouble with the Buds.

In this 7-4 win it may have actually been a difficult task to pick a N0 1 star of game. Though Jason Blake got the honours, and deservedly so, it could have been any number of other Leafs tonight.

Doninic Moore also had two goals and an assist, Ponikarovsky, Hagman and White also had multipoint nights. Even Toskala, who allowed four goals on just twenty shots, actually made a couple or really good save to help keep the Leafs in it.



This game could have easily slipped away from the Leafs, if it had not been for a timely blown call that went against the Avs. In the third period, Ryan Smyth who unfortunately for him, has a reputation for crashing into opposing goalies,quite probably cost his team the win. On a play to the net, Ryan did in fact interfere with Toskala. I know alot of people will call me, well, names. But if you pay close attention in the highlight videos, you will see that Ryan had actually turned into the front of the net area and was prevented from actually running over Toskala by Shen.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! The Leafs next action comes Saturday at home against Pittsburgh! As always, you can hear all the action live, right here on Bench Brawl!